I got this movie recently when it came out on Ultra HD Blu-ray simply because it was missing in my collection and, being a Sci-Fi fan, missing 2001 in my collection simply would not do. It is a movie that was made to rely almost entirely on the visuals. It could be said that it is a visual symphony if that makes sense. Thus it was filmed on 70 mm film and in 6 channel stereo which, at the time was a huge thing. Thanks to this it actually made some sense to transfer this movie to Ultra HD Blu-ray since the originals were really good enough even though the movie was made in 1968.
I remember watching this movie as a kid and was profoundly disappointed. I thought come on, where’s the adventure, not to mention any form of action? Today I can more appreciate it for what it is. A visually stunning movie. I also can more appreciate the fact that the movie is trying to be scientifically accurate instead of going all out on the fiction part. The parts where gravity, or rather the lack thereof, was portrayed, that was really high tech movie making at the time. I also noticed now, when re-watching it, that all the screens are actually flat which also was really far in the future at the time. Actually it was still pretty much in the future back in 2001.
However, even today, I have to say that I find the movie excruciatingly boring. It is two and a half hour long and it moves very, very slowly. It takes 50 minutes of movie time before we actually get to the main part of the movie and get onto the Discovery for instance. No matter how great the visuals are, there’s only so much boredom I can stand before it starts to get to me.
In the last 30 minutes or so the movie starts to become very psychedelic. The part where Bowman is pulled into the vortex, the stargate, is going on forever and in the end it just becomes a blur of headache inducing color effects. The final parts of the movie with the three Bowmans of different ages is just weird.
So,as this is a non-professional and personal take on the movie I cannot really motivate more than 3 out of 5 stars.
I hadn’t actually planned to review this movie. Everything has really already been said about it but I could not refrain after having read this crap at Rotten Tomatoes:
Critics Consensus: One of the most influential of all sci-fi films — and one of the most controversial — Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 is a delicate, poetic meditation on the ingenuity — and folly — of mankind.
It’s pretty well known that Rotten Tomatoes is the absolutely worst movie rating site around and the so called “critics” are useless culture elite morons with an over-inflated opinion about themselves at best and politically motivated SJW asswipes at worst but still.
What the hell is controversial about it? Reality check, there’s really nothing controversial about it at all. It is just a fictional story in the future. Then we have that crap “the folly”. What bloody folly? If anything the movie shows a much better future than what we got. A future where the politicians apparently promoted advancement of science and space exploration which is the direct opposite to the money and oxygen wasters we have today.
Sure, if you indulge too much in smoking funny mushrooms or are politically motivated you can probably “interpret” the hell out of any movie and “find” whatever message you want but it is still bullshit.
Well, that was my (controversial?) take on 2001.